Last weekend, I was going about my business, when a person stopped me asking myself and I to attend the Realise event at his church which is UCKG. We have had a few separate invitations from this church. The first was to get anointed with oil by ‘the man of God’ and my wife was offered to come for an anointed rose… yes you heard me right. Anyway we played dumb and asked him what it was about without divulging the fact that we were Christians. He then proceeded to tell us how we could learn the keys to being successful. At this stage there was NO mention of God, NO mention of Jesus, NO mention of sin, NO mention of my need for forgiveness. I actually tried to steer him in the way by asking him what would happen if I became very successful (like Steve Jobs) , but died afterwards? Still nothing.

In the end, I had to tell him about his error because no doubt, if I had been a non-christian, and asked him all those questions and left, I would have left dead in my sins without any knowledge of the gospel at all. I did ask him why he never spoke to me about God and he basically said that non Christians would not be interested so he talked about the other stuff to ‘get me in’. The problem with that is if I decide not to visit their church, the very thing that has the power to save me i.e. the gospel, is the very thing that is left out in the conversation. It is hard enough going out of your way to witness to someone but when someone comes to you asking questions, we as Christians should jump at the opportunity to give them the good news.

As I said, this is not the first experience that I have had with UCKG and many times, I have had their newspapers in the post and their general thread and emphasis is about being happy and successful, but not about being righteous and being in a right standing with God. A classic example of this is their series ‘The 5 Biggest Failures of Jesus’ (I didn’t even know that he did fail, silly me)

As per their website

When we say that Jesus had failures, people’s knee-jerk response is, “No He didn’t. He’s God. He never fails at anything.” But the truth is that Jesus failed many times throughout His 33-year earthly ministry. He experienced disappointments and many times things did not always go quite the way He wanted.

But… He turned them around… every single time. Whenever Jesus experienced failure, He used it to His advantage and either turned the failure into success, or put more effort into something else that would bring more results.

You may say ‘What’s the problem?’ Do you see a re-occurring theme? They have twisted the scriptures to somehow make the bible a self help manual. The problem is even though on the surface, it seems to be harmless and even christian, the real focus is not about Christ but it is the gospel of YOU. The focus is on being successful in THIS life on earth. The very thing scripture tells us not to focus on

Set your minds on things that are above, NOT on things that are on earth. (Colossians 3:2)

Am I saying that it is wrong to have earthly ambitions? Not at all, but from my experience and from the many newspapers and experiences that I have had with this church, the emphasis has always been on the here and now and an example of this can be seen in the five lessons above.

Do I have any personal gripes against UCKG? Not at all but I have enough experiences to know that churches (whether it be this church or a Joel Osteen type of church) which subscribe to this type of theology is a dangerous one. I can be the most successful person in this life but the truth of the matter is, if I die without Christ, I will die in my sins and will be heading to hell

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Witnessing can be very tricky. I am not familiar with UCKG, but we get a lot of LDS folks doing the same kind of thing. I think Yuma is about the most “ministry rich” place I’ve ever been. We’ve got churches (and liquor stores) on almost every corner. Lots of opportunities to witness. Yet because it’s the “fringe” elements that do most of the (door to door) witnessing, people expect anyone who comes to their door or stops them on the street is going to be a wackadoo too. It’s tough. Anyway, thanks for your post.

wonder if this stuff is mindgames; like cs lewis, they say he was a genious but he mixed all kinds of paganism with christianity. a lot of people and christians beleive in this guy – stay out of those places because u dont know whats real or not. u dont know if those people on the pews are going to hell and taking u with them.

Please all you good Christians stay away from UCKG. These people are evil false prophets. I was a member for 10 years. They bancrupted many people in there destroyed marriages. Caused separation in my family. These crooks use God to brainwash people to donate all their money, all savings and default mortgages, rent, bills. People lost homes because of them. They are wolves in sheep’s clothing. They make up evil lies about members, assistants and pastors who find strength to leave. God enlighten me and gave me wisdom and strength to leave. Unfortunately some of my family still go there and taking payday loans just to survive because crooks uckg fleeced them out of every penny. The are taking advantage of vulnerable people.

I have been reading your blog for a while now and was very disappointed when I read this post. I am a member of the UCKG in Houston Texas, and I have a different point of view. When I came to this place, my mother was suffering from epileptic attacks, my father was cheating, drinking, smoking and other things. There were also talking about divorce. It was there that my mother and father were set free, and they stayed together for more 20 years before she died. I came from the Catholic church and didn’t know the truth. It was there that they taught me about having Jesus and I got saved. So It made me very sad the way you jumped into conclusions about this place without even participating in one single service. I recommend you to go to a Sunday service first, speak to the pastor, and you will certainly see he work they do. I would be very glad if you did!